I haven't seen it since it was out in theatres. I thought it was rubbish then, but my Goth-girl friends all loved it.

Sometimes I enjoy a film better on second viewing, once I know what to expect. But that was not the case this time. If anything, I liked it even less.

To be fair, it had some really striking visuals, the music was good, and Anthony Hopkins was fun to watch as Van Helsing. But overall--blech.

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I love Coppolla's Dracula. The only other one I've seen is the old Bela Lugosi B&W one, and while they are very different types of movies, I'd put then about equal in terms of how much I liked them.

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You should definitely check out the first Hammer film version, THE HORROR OF DRACULA, as well as the Jourdan version from the eighties.

I haven't seen the Palance version in ages, but, as I recall, he made a nicely ferocious Count. That was also, I believe, the first DRACULA movie to explicitly link the fictional Dracula to the historical Vlad the Impaler. It also introduced the whole business of Dracula searching for the reincarnation of his dead wife--decades before the Coppola version.

And did I mention that the screenplay was written by Richard Matheson?

I'm new to the series as well (didn't read it until after the TV show premiered), and I haven't read them (but I've seen other people talking about them online, which is how I found out what they were.) They're three novellas covering the adventures of Aegon Targaryen and Ser Duncan, a member of the Kingsguard.

Aegon is the brother of Maester Aemon and a (future, at the time the stories are set) king. The first time I saw these novellas discussed, I got them confused.